Spear vs Kois: 2 Critical Airway Blind Spots
Spear Education and the Kois Center are two of dentistry's most respected CE institutions — but neither was designed to prepare a general dentist to screen a seven-year-old for sleep-disordered breathing. Here is exactly where each program leaves a gap, and what to do about it.
If you have read Spear Education reviews or researched the Kois Center before committing tuition, you already know both institutions are excellent. What those reviews rarely tell you — because most reviewers are not asking the pediatric airway question — is whether finishing either program will leave you equipped to recognize sleep-disordered breathing in a seven-year-old who is mouth-breathing, grinding, and falling asleep in class. The short answer is: probably not. That is not a criticism of either institution. It is a description of what each was designed to do, and a gap every general dentist deserves to know about before they assume their comprehensive CE has it covered.
Quick Answer: Neither Spear Education nor the Kois Center markets itself as a pediatric airway program, and neither curriculum — as currently structured — reliably delivers a general dentist a pediatric-specific screening protocol, a framework for myofunctional referral, or fluency in communicating with a pediatric ENT. Both build exceptional diagnostic foundations. Both leave a specific and consequential gap in the pediatric airway picture. A clinician who finishes either program and assumes the airway question is covered has a blind spot they do not know they have.This is a critical consideration in Spear Education reviews strategy.
Table of Contents
- What Spear Education Actually Teaches on Sleep and Airway
- What the Kois Center Actually Teaches on Sleep and Airway
- The Shared Blind Spot: Where Both Programs Stop Short
- What Both Programs Do Exceptionally Well
- Commercial Independence: Who Is Selling Something?
- The Practical Decision: How to Use Each Program
- Key Takeaways
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Spear Education Actually Teaches on Sleep and Airway
Spear Education's sleep content is real, well-structured, and built almost entirely around the adult patient. The flagship offering in this space is the Dental Sleep Medicine Mini Residency, a program that draws consistently positive reviews from general dentists who want to add oral appliance therapy to their practices. Attendees describe thorough instruction on titration protocols, patient selection criteria, and the mechanics of mandibular advancement devices. For a dentist treating adult OSA patients, this is a legitimate and useful credential.
The Spear Education reviews landscape continues evolving with these developments.The problem surfaces when that same dentist looks across the chair at a child. According to multiple attendees who completed both Spear's sleep content and a dedicated pediatric airway program afterward, the Spear curriculum did not give them a framework for the pediatric developmental picture. The concepts are simply different. Adult OSA screening involves Epworth scores, STOP-BANG questionnaires, and referral for polysomnography. Pediatric sleep-disordered breathing — a term that covers everything from primary snoring to obstructive sleep apnea in children — involves arch development, adenotonsillar hypertrophy, nasal airway obstruction, and the myofunctional-orthodontic interface. Those are not adjacent topics. They require separate training.
Smart approaches to Spear Education reviews incorporate these principles.Spear's broader curriculum, anchored around occlusion, esthetics, restorative dentistry, and implants, is organized through the Study Club model and on-campus programs in Scottsdale. It is a comprehensive platform, and the American Dental Association recognizes continuing education from Spear for CERP credit. What Spear Education reviews from the pediatric airway community consistently flag, however, is that pediatric-specific airway content — nasal obstruction assessment, arch width norms in primary and mixed dentition, referral pathways to pediatric sleep medicine — is not a featured pillar in the publicly available curriculum as of 2026.
What the Kois Center Actually Teaches on Sleep and Airway
The Kois Center takes a fundamentally different pedagogical approach, and its treatment of sleep-disordered breathing reflects that structure in ways that are both a strength and a limitation. The curriculum is organized around Kois Departures, a competency-based progression through diagnosis, treatment planning, occlusion, periodontology, and restorative dentistry across roughly two years of coursework. Sleep-disordered breathing appears in this curriculum, but it is woven into the broader systemic health and risk-assessment conversation rather than delivered as a standalone clinical protocol.
Leading practitioners in Spear Education reviews recommend this approach.Reviewers of the full Kois program describe a genuinely rigorous intellectual environment. The center's emphasis on biological principles and evidence hierarchy is a real differentiator in a CE landscape where marketing claims routinely outpace the evidence base. For a dentist who wants to understand why a clinical decision is defensible — not just what the protocol says to do — the Kois framework builds that reasoning in a way that few other programs match. That reasoning is directly transferable to airway risk assessment, even if the pediatric-specific protocol is not explicitly taught.
Research on Spear Education reviews confirms these findings.The limitation is the same one that appears in Spear Education reviews from pediatric-focused clinicians: arch development, myofunctional therapy referral, and the communication framework for working with pediatric ENTs and sleep physicians are referenced in the Kois curriculum but are not the focus of dedicated hands-on modules. According to the Academy of General Dentistry, roughly 3 to 12 percent of children experience sleep-disordered breathing, with estimates varying by diagnostic criteria — a prevalence high enough that any comprehensive dental curriculum arguably warrants dedicated pediatric airway instruction. The Kois curriculum, as structured, does not yet deliver that at the protocol level.
The Shared Blind Spot: Where Both Programs Stop Short
The gap both programs share is specific enough to name precisely, which is more useful than a vague criticism. A general dentist who completes either Spear's comprehensive track or the full Kois curriculum will likely leave without a reliable pediatric screening protocol — something as practical as knowing what to look for in a six-year-old's oral exam that warrants a conversation with a parent. They will likely lack working familiarity with how Friedman staging and Mallampati classification apply differently in a pediatric context. They will likely be uncertain how to write a referral letter that a pediatric ENT or sleep physician will act on rather than file.
This is a critical consideration in Spear Education reviews strategy.Here is the thing: this is not a small gap in practice terms. A child presenting with nighttime bruxism, chronic mouth-breathing, dark circles, and a constricted maxillary arch is presenting in general dental offices every day. Research published in peer-reviewed journals estimates that sleep-disordered breathing affects between 1 and 5 percent of children in the obstructive sleep apnea range, and a broader 10 to 15 percent when primary snoring and upper airway resistance are included (Lumeng & Chervin, Pediatrics, 2008). These children are not primarily showing up in sleep clinics — they are showing up for their six-month recall appointments. The dentist who sees them may be the first clinician positioned to notice the signs, and whether they notice depends entirely on whether their training gave them a framework to look.
Professionals focused on Spear Education reviews see these patterns consistently.Neither Spear nor Kois designed their programs to fill this role, and that is a coherent institutional choice. Both are comprehensive adult restorative and diagnostic programs. The error is not in the programs. The error is in assuming that comprehensive CE automatically covers pediatric airway. It does not, and every Spear Education review or Kois review that reads as a general endorsement without flagging this specific gap is leaving out information a clinician needs.
The Spear Education reviews landscape continues evolving with these developments.What Both Programs Do Exceptionally Well
The foundational diagnostic reasoning that Spear and Kois build is something dedicated airway programs genuinely cannot match — and that matters for how you use the airway knowledge you acquire elsewhere. A dentist who has completed Spear's comprehensive track understands treatment sequencing, occlusal risk, and case documentation at a level that makes their clinical work more defensible across the board. A dentist who has completed the Kois curriculum has internalized an evidence hierarchy that will serve them every time a vendor-sponsored airway protocol makes a claim that outruns its research base.
Smart approaches to Spear Education reviews incorporate these principles.That foundational strength is directly relevant to pediatric airway practice. Dentists who add dedicated pediatric airway CE after a Spear or Kois foundation consistently report that the airway-specific content lands differently when they already have rigorous diagnostic training underneath it. They can evaluate the evidence quality of an expansion protocol, ask harder questions about treatment timing, and document their clinical reasoning in a way that supports appropriate referral rather than premature treatment. The sequence matters: comprehensive foundation first, airway-specific overlay second, is a coherent and defensible CE path.
Commercial Independence: Who Is Selling Something?
Both Spear and Kois occupy a meaningfully different commercial position from several dedicated pediatric airway programs, and that difference is worth stating plainly. Several providers in the pediatric airway and dental sleep space also sell the appliance, the laboratory work, or the expansion system their curriculum depends on. That does not automatically make the teaching bad — vendor-affiliated programs often have the highest hands-on volume precisely because the commercial relationship funds the clinical infrastructure. But a clinician deciding where to spend tuition deserves to know when a curriculum has something else to sell alongside the CE credit.
Spear Education was acquired by Danaher Corporation in 2019. Danaher is a large industrial and life sciences conglomerate, and its ownership of Spear raises reasonable questions about long-term curriculum independence. There is no publicly available evidence of appliance-company influence on Spear's sleep content specifically, but the question is worth asking before enrolling in a multi-year program. The Kois Center is faculty-owned and foundation-funded, which gives it a structural independence from commercial pressure that is relatively rare in this CE space. For dentists who weight institutional independence heavily — and given the commercial dynamics of the pediatric airway appliance market, many should — this distinction has practical meaning. For context, see the broader landscape of Dentistry Today's continuing education coverage for how the field discusses these commercial relationships.
The Practical Decision: How to Use Each Program
The choice between Spear and Kois is not a choice between airway-aware and airway-unaware — it is a choice between two different comprehensive foundations, after which you will need supplementary pediatric airway CE from a different source regardless. That reframing is more useful than a ranking, because it means the decision criterion should be which comprehensive foundation fits your learning style, your practice scope, and your budget — not which one covers pediatric airway better, because neither covers it at the protocol level you need.
Spear's Study Club model works well for dentists who want ongoing peer accountability and a curriculum they can absorb over years while staying in practice. The campus experience in Scottsdale is consistently praised in Spear Education reviews for the quality of the faculty and the hands-on simulation environment. Kois works well for dentists who prioritize evidence rigor and want a cohort-based experience in a smaller, more intensive setting. The two-year Kois Departures structure means a significant commitment of time and tuition, but reviewers consistently describe it as a practice-changing experience in diagnostic reasoning. What you bring back to practice on Monday from either program is a more rigorous clinician. What you will still need afterward is a dedicated course on pediatric airway screening, referral, and the myofunctional therapy conversation — from a provider whose curriculum is built specifically for that purpose.
For a hygienist or myofunctional therapist trying to identify which dentists in their referral network can competently co-manage a pediatric airway case, knowing that a dentist trained at Spear or Kois tells you something valuable about their diagnostic reasoning — but it does not tell you whether they can screen a child's airway. That depends on what supplementary CE they pursued afterward. Ask directly.
Key Takeaways
- Spear Education reviews consistently praise the adult sleep medicine content, particularly the Dental Sleep Medicine Mini Residency, but attendees who have also completed dedicated pediatric airway programs report the Spear curriculum did not prepare them to assess a child's airway.
- The Kois Center integrates sleep-disordered breathing into its systemic risk-assessment framework but does not offer dedicated hands-on modules in pediatric arch development or myofunctional referral.
- Both programs build foundational diagnostic reasoning that makes subsequent pediatric airway CE more effective — the sequence of comprehensive foundation first, airway overlay second, is coherent and recommended.
- Neither Spear nor Kois sells an appliance or laboratory service tied to its curriculum, a meaningful distinction from several dedicated airway providers.
- Kois is faculty-owned and foundation-funded; Spear is owned by Danaher Corporation — a relevant consideration for clinicians who weight institutional independence.
- An estimated 10 to 15 percent of children experience some form of sleep-disordered breathing (Lumeng & Chervin, Pediatrics, 2008), making pediatric airway screening a routine general dentistry competency, not a subspecialty add-on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Spear Education cover pediatric sleep-disordered breathing in its curriculum?
Spear's sleep content is oriented toward adult OSA and oral appliance therapy. Pediatric-specific content — arch development norms, adenotonsillar assessment, myofunctional referral — is not a featured pillar in the publicly available Spear curriculum as of 2026. The Dental Sleep Medicine Mini Residency is thorough on adult protocols and relatively thin on the pediatric developmental picture.
Does the Kois Center teach airway dentistry for children?
The Kois Center addresses sleep-disordered breathing within its systemic risk and diagnosis framework, but pediatric arch development and myofunctional referral are referenced rather than taught through dedicated hands-on modules. Kois graduates leave with strong diagnostic reasoning but typically need supplementary pediatric airway CE to build a clinical screening protocol.
Which program should a general dentist choose for pediatric airway training?
Neither Spear nor Kois is primarily a pediatric airway program, and choosing between them on that basis misframes the decision. Choose based on learning style, practice scope, and budget for the comprehensive foundation. Then pursue dedicated pediatric airway CE — from a provider built specifically for that purpose — as a second layer.
Is Spear Education's Dental Sleep Medicine Mini Residency enough for pediatric airway screening?
No. The Mini Residency delivers a solid adult OSA and oral appliance credential. It does not deliver a pediatric screening protocol, Friedman or Mallampati frameworks in a pediatric context, or a referral communication framework for pediatric ENTs and sleep physicians. These require separate, pediatric-focused training from a different curriculum.
Are Spear Education or Kois Center affiliated with appliance companies?
Neither institution is primarily selling an appliance tied to its curriculum, which distinguishes both from several dedicated airway providers. Spear is owned by Danaher Corporation, raising questions about long-term independence worth asking before a multi-year enrollment. Kois is faculty-owned and foundation-funded, giving it stronger structural independence from commercial pressure.
Last updated: June 2025